2025 № 3 (54)

UDC 159.923.2; 791.43–2

BBC 85.374.3(3)

DOI: 10.51678/2226-0072-2025-3-458-473

For cit.: Kolotaev V.A. Bakhtin’s Model of the Grotesque Body in Coralie Fargeat’s Film The Substance and Split Personality. Hudozhestvennaya kul’tura [Art & Culture Studies], 2025, no. 3, pp. 458–473. https://doi.org/10.51678/2226-0072-2025-3-458-473. (In Russian)

Kolotaev Vladimir A. 

D.Sc. (in Philology), D.Sc. (in Art History), Head of Cinema and Contemporary Art Department, Dean of the Faculty of Art History, Russian State University for the Humanities, 6 Miusskaya Sq., Moscow, 125047, Russia 

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7190-5726 

ResearcherID: HKV-1262-2023 

kolotaev.va@rggu.ru 

Bakhtin’s Model of the Grotesque Body in Coralie Fargeat’s Film The Substance and Split Personality 

Abstract. Coralie Fargeat’s film The Substance (2024) presents a model of the modern subject’s personality, a key feature of which is the internal conflict between the structures of the self. On the one hand, there is the outwardly ideal, successful narcissistic self-embodied by the young copy, Sue; on the other hand, there is the ‘bad’ part of the personality which must be hidden, denied recognition, suppressed, and exploited. The interaction between the new and the old, the dying and the nascent evokes Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue and carnival, particularly the idea of the ever-becoming grotesque body that unites death and birth, youth and old age, praise and abuse into a continuous whole. However, the film’s system of imagery excludes the optimistic component of the carnivalesque grotesque body model. Neither part of the protagonist’s split personality is capable of engaging in a dialogic exchange, the process of interaction based on the awareness of one’s own wholeness and understanding oneself as the Other. The impossibility of synthesizing the fragmented parts of the personality results in a monstrous mutation — a pseudo-grotesque body of the characters, incapable of sustaining life. 

Keywords: carnivalization, grotesque body, narcissism, split personality, dialogue, repression, contemporary cinema, identity crisis

References:

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Received 21.04.2025 

Accepted 04.06.2025